Fiasco

Has anyone played this before? I am in love with the concept. D6 RPG with no preparation required and it markets itself as a "make your own Coen brothers movie". Everyone role plays as a character with clear motivation and no self control, meaning everyone winds up in incredibly dicey situations, getting in over their heads and trying to deal with the consequences.

The play examples in the back of the book struck me as difficult to follow. I've read the whole thing cover to cover twice now and I'm still not positive on the rules. I was trying to get a GM that I know runs it fantastically to run a game at Pax East, but we ended up playing paranoia instead. That and dread are on my short list of games I own and want to play but havn't yet had the opportunity.

I've played Fiasco a couple of times, and it didn't really press any of my buttons. I had similar problems with Prime Time Adventures and A Penny For My Thoughts, though, so take my opinion with a large grain of salt.

Fiasco's concept is great, and it can produce a really great Cohen Bros.-style story, but I didn't find it to be particularly engaging mechanically. It's not so much an RPG as it is a framework for collectively creating a particular kind of story. Shock: Social Science Fiction is the same way, in my opinion. It's not bad, but I like more "G" in my "RPG."

I like Prime Time Adventures because, while I never actually get to play it, I have done character and setting creation in it and it functions in much the same way as a story brainstorming session. Coming up with ideas for a fictional television show is perhaps even more enjoyable to me than the actual roleplaying of it. Seriously, within a few hours we had something which would make a great comic book or anime.

I didn't have much fun with PTA in play, but the pitch session was awesome. The one time I got to play it, we created a show that was basically Band of Brothers in space, which was a damn hot idea, but the whole thing fell apart once we started interfacing with the game mechanics.

That said, I know a lot of people that absolutely love games like PTA, Fiasco and Shock:. Story games like that usually do what they do very well, they're just not my thing. Give me Burning Wheel, Fate or Dogs in the Vineyard any day.

On the other hand, if you want something that hits a nice sweet spot between Story Games and RPGs, check out Lady Blackbird by John Harper. The mechanics are pretty light, and it's got a very Final Fantasy-meets-Firefly feel to it.

I just got the book in the mail today and I'm really excited to play it. I already have it scheduled for this Friday. I'm planning to laminate element cards and kinda go crazy with it. And my mom had this awesome box to put all the extras in.

I laminated the playmat, element/category cards, name cards, and a guide on facilitating the game. The cards were laminated to be made reusable with dry erase markers. Pete, my game also lost steam towards the end of Act II, and we cut it short 4 turns because 2 characters were dead and the rest of the characters didn't have a conflict to keep the game going.